


Our Circles Are Vicious

by rowofstars



Category: Lie to Me (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 06:58:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3281072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. Post 2x18 Headlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Circles Are Vicious

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first and only Lie to Me fic. Imported from my LJ. Originally posted in 2010.

Gillian stares at the passport in her hand.

Her eyes read the name for a fifth time. Marco, just like in the cryptic text message she shouldn’t have seen. She swallows and tries to breathe through the pain in her chest. Her mind is spinning with a thousand possible explanations, but all of them lead to only one conclusion. She runs a hand through her hair, palm cold and clammy against her forehead. No matter how many times she looks or how many ways she tries to rearrange the letters in her mind, it will never say David Burns.

She stares at the photo, benign and awkward as official photos always are. He looks normal, conventional, the type of guy that meets the parents and brings a bottle of wine to dinner. She tries to see the psychologist, the man who is good at dealing with damaged kids and better at making her laugh. Instead she sees a lip twitch, pupils constrict, a bead of sweat trickle over lines on a forehead.

She sees a lie.

She hears his cell phone chime with another message. Her fingers twitch to pick it up. She glances towards the bathroom door, thinks about going in there with the evidence in her hand and confronting him. It’s what she would do if he were sitting across from her in an interview room, as she made mental notes of every tick and gesture. She’d let him dig the hole and then toss the passport on the table, watching as the dirt caved in around him.

Instead she smoothes the t-shirt back into place and slips the drawer closed quietly, inhaling a shaky breath.

When Dave steps out of the shower, she’s all smiles and sweet goodbyes with a soft kiss just to the side of his mouth. He smiles and leans in for another, but she twists away from him with a coy look and breezes out the door.

She’s calm. She’s normal. She’s lying.

 

 

 

 

Today there is a dead fighter, a new FBI watchdog and Cal. The latter two have a history apparently, but then everyone who comes into contact with Cal Lightman seems to walk away with a history. There’s an edge to his demeanor. Gillian knows Cal is neck deep in it, and he knows that she knows. 

Gillian knows that too.

The brother is suitably distraught and expectedly evasive, but his grief makes him an open book. It’s too easy. She’s grateful though. Her mind is clouded with uncertainty, flashing back to the text message and the passport, a clumsy photograph of a man she thought she knew staring back at her. It’s a situation she promised herself she wouldn’t be in again.

She searches a few databases, makes a few calls, willing to abuse her privilege and access because she believes has a right to know who she’s really been sleeping with these past months. She finds a charter reservation and more questions.

Her mind is reeling when Cal pokes his head in. She snaps the portfolio shut and tosses it on the desk. It lands harder than she intends and she startles. She leans back in her chair a second later, and forces her hands to relax against the arms. 

Cal is characteristically jittery and curious. It makes her tense. She’s always the one with the open door and he’s always the one pushing it in. He may be trying to be a friend, but she’s not interested in his brand of support right now. There’s no doubt that he ‘ _has her back,_ ’ she’s just tired of the way he gives with the right and takes with the left, offering a hand or a shoulder and then reminding her of all the failings of her personal life. Sometimes she wishes he could turn off his compulsion to know, that he could stop seeing the pieces and let a smile just be a smile.

She tells him she’s seeing someone. She tells him to stay out of her business. She doesn’t tell him that her track record with men remains intact. He nods and agrees, but she knows that he knows. He knows this too.

She was never very good at lying, least of all to him.

 

 

 

 

Gillian lets herself in. 

Dave catches her and it never occurred to her until now that Ben might have been right. It had seemed so outlandish at the time that a drug smuggler would masquerade as a psychologist. She takes an unconscious step back. He pulls out the passport, waving it in front of her and showing her that he knew all along. 

Her anxiety shifts to anger, fueled by the aching pain of betrayal in her chest. He is as reticent as she expected, as she feared, and her carefully protected house of cards wobbles. Her stride is insistent and purposeful, driving herself forward while she still has the conviction to leave. She can almost hear it all collapsing behind her, the dust chasing her as she steps through the bedroom door.

The look on his face as he confesses the truth says he might have heard it too.

She exhales a breath she didn’t know she was holding when he says his name, Atherton, not Burns, but still Dave. She falls against his chest, wrapping her arms around his torso. They’ll be okay, she thinks, now that she knows the truth.

The only person she’s ever been able to lie to is herself.

 

 

 

 

Cal knows.

Gillian wonders when this will start to surprise her.

He babbles on, stretching what should have been a friendly passing into a long awkward moment. This doesn’t surprise her either. He pulls Dave down the hallway, but she follows, ready to stand by what she said earlier about not meddling in her life, when there is so little she has of it that’s just for her. But there’s that part of her that knows Cal means well, that can’t help smiling when she hears him say _handle with care._ She’s got a history after all.

He knows this.

She knows that he knows this.

He knows this too.

Their circles are vicious.


End file.
